Donuts, The Doctor & Dicks

Hang on, wait a minute; it’s 2011? You’re kidding, right? Well fuck my fat aunt, it’s well over ten years since I graduated. Besides getting married and spawning two pint-sized duplicates, I’m not exactly sure what I’ve done with all that precious time. It’s safe to assume I’ve probably spent an unhealthy proportion of that period dedicated to self-abuse, be it sporadic illicit revisits to my former habit as a smoker, heart-threateningly heroic intakes of saturated fats and lastly but most likely, pummelling my fist into my groin like a man possessed by the spirit of Onan. (Of which, I’ve never been quite sure why masturbation is classed as “self-abuse”. Who’s being abused exactly – the tissues?)



Dressing like a twat in my 20's



All of which have taken variable tolls on my external appearance; whilst you could in no way describe me as fat, I’m certainly not thin any more. Subsequently, dressing for my age (early thirties) has become something of a sartorial minefield. Let’s be clear: I’ve never been cool. Hardly a revelation, more an acknowledgement of reality but there it is. Being in my twenties was fairly easy however –new media had made ironic cartoon t-shirt-wearing pricks of us all, and a pair of battered Converse All Stars would cover any embarrassment to the point where they made a perennially-uncool character like Doctor Who the epitome of chic for about five minutes sometime in the middle of the decade. A minor point to note here – I had a letter published in the official magazine for said television programme circa 2003 pointing out that their recent photo mock-up of what they believed a “cool Who fan” looks like was troublingly spot on in my case.*





Tim Bisley - 00's style icon. Sort of.



But should thirtysomethings still wear ripped jeans and prints of Futurama characters? Does that not belie the perceived maturity a man of stature is supposed to convey? But I’m not spiritually mature, just physically so and as mentioned above, verging on a cliff labelled “chubby”. A cliff made of Battenbergs, Bournvilles and Belly Pork. And the only other person I know my age who dresses as a misunderstood goth just out of sixth form looks like a dick. But then just as equally, fitting into comfortable jeans and v-neck sweaters from Man at Next just screams dick too. It seems whatever I do, I’m destined to walk around like a baffled, weather-beaten phallus that’s just jizzed his load. Again.



One mighty prick flanked by his symmetrical balls






*yeah, you'd think I would have remembered to scan this image and a photo of me at the time to fully illustrate this point, but then you'd be mistaking me for someone who knows what they're doing.